


Bookends

by muskoxen



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dogs, F/M, Karen Page's Backstory, Karen works through some stuff, Murder, Season 3 Speculation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 09:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13187103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muskoxen/pseuds/muskoxen
Summary: Karen told Matt to stay away from Fagan Corners. Now, her dad's dead.Karen's barely holding herself together in the aftermath, and she'll need help to make it through intact.





	1. Karen keeps her head straight

_There’s always another way_ , he said after as if she had any choice in the matter. As if they both hadn’t forced her into a situation where she had to choose between Matt – her friend, her ex, and a certified Good Guy™ – and her father.

The kicker, of course, was how disappointed Matt was in her. She’d saved his life, the lives of the people in Fagan Corners, the lives of countless others who would have been harmed by her father’s legacy.

She’d unfettered him, hefted his barely-conscious weight across her shoulders in a fireman’s carry, and got him out of there. Put him in her car, and went back to deal with the aftermath. She’d found her dad’s computers, his notebooks, his phone. Loaded them into the back of her car, and gone back to clean up. Wiped her prints, started the fire, drove away. Basically, she kept her head on straight while Matt was passed out in the passenger seat, woozy from a combination of meds and blood loss.

Matt slept through most of the next stop, where she poured diesel on the stack of firewood, technology, and bloody clothes. She stayed up through the night watching the last evidence of her father’s death burn. When the ash was white and fine, she grabbed the lug wrench out of the spare tire in the car and smashed the bits of tech she could still see. Collected into the three fast food bags she found littering the floorboards, the remnants looked small and innocuous. She’ll dump them along the way to work tomorrow. She already got rid of the shotgun, lobbing it into the Hudson when they passed through North of Waterford.

By then, Matt had slept most of it off. He’d come to while she wiped down his wounds with bottled water, taped the paper towels to the leaking cuts. Getting him to take the ibuprofen she scrounged from the bottom of her purse was easy. Getting him to shut the hell up was harder.

“Karen, we need to talk about this.”

“We don’t. He’s gone. His workshop’s gone. His research is gone. When we get back to New York, I’ll call a Homeland agent I know. Report that I’m worried about my dad, that I got a strange call, that he didn’t sound normal. They’ll do their thing, find the cobalt. Connect the dots and paint a picture of what he was up to.”

“Karen,” he said to that. As if she needed to be lectured. As if she didn’t realize that killing your father was normally a Bad Thing that Bad Guys did.

Normal fathers didn’t have secret plans to irradiate Vermont.

“Shut the hell up, Matt,” she snapped back and vaguely registered how sharp, commanding, _pissed off_ she sounded. “I don’t want to hear a fucking word from you. Not until we’re back in the city.”

She knew why she was angry, of course. And it wasn’t all Matt’s fault. Paxton Page probably would have gone off the rails sooner or later, would have tried out his inventions on a few more innocents before putting his little invention to the test in a big way. A way that would be impossible to hide from the world.

It was so stupid. The world didn’t need any bigger or more destructive ways to kill each other. Everything nowadays was about precision, efficiency, accuracy. Governments didn’t want more nukes, they wanted better nukes. Or more stealthy helicopters. Or bug-sized drones, piloted by some Air Force guy in Nevada, that could eliminate an entire room of hostiles.

But Matt was the one who went digging, who wouldn’t leave it alone. He just kept prodding and pushing and digging like Kevin Page was just a name. Like Karen never had a brother. Like he wasn’t a person she had lost. She told Matt to drop it, begged him to leave it alone. 

_Please_ , she’d pled. _For me. Just let this go_.

But then he starting poking around Fagan Corners in his goddamn suit. When that didn’t work, he played "disabled friend of Karen’s" and went about subtly interrogating her dad. But Paxton was out of his mind paranoid at that point. That was how all three of them ended up in her dad’s workshop, listening to his spiel about legacy and transforming the world while Matt lay bound to a medical chair like something out of a bad Cold War spy film.

Matt had still been talking – mumbling, really – through his puffed up face dripping blood on his shirtfront. Trying to talk her dad down, convince him that he didn’t need to pick this as his legacy, that his name could mean something good. But Paxton wasn’t listening, was speaking manically about how he’d change the world for the better, put the US back on top, stop the endless wars. Then he went to stick Matt with the serum, make him Test Subject 8. And then the time for talking was done.

Karen had stepped out from behind the door, leveled the Browning, and pulled the trigger.

If Matt had just left her past behind her – where she had left it five years ago – none of this would have happened. She’d never have needed to save him, and wouldn’t have had to make the choice between him and the man who sort-of raised her.

Matt started talking, of course, as soon as they got to the city. While she was battling traffic to get to his unbelievably nice loft – discounted rent, her ass – he was trying to lecture her about morals, and redemption.

_You didn’t have to do that, Karen._

_We weren’t at that point._

_He was your dad, and I know you must have loved him._

_There’s always another way, another thing to try._

He couched his moralizing in softer language, so it was a little less accusatory than the soundbites that played over and over in her head. He reached for her a couple times, trying to get through to her unresponsive mien, before she shoved his hands away with a “I’m driving.” But what she really wanted to say was _Fuck you. I just killed my dad to save you and now you want to lecture me about what I should have done?_

She dropped him off at his place around noon, sitting in stone cold silence while he leaned in and told her that he’d follow up with her later. That he’d check in.

She went home after that. Smiled at her neighbors like cheery ol’ Karen in 3B, got her mail, and headed upstairs.

She put the roses in the window immediately.

True, she hadn’t heard from Frank since Lewis Wilson, hadn’t heard of anything connected to him since the firefight at the carousel, but she knew he was out there. And if he was out there, he was checking in on her.

By nine, she’s wondering if she should just risk it and call Madani when her phone buzzes with a blocked number. She knows its Frank before she answers it, starts talking as soon as she hears his breath.

“I need to talk to you, in person. Your friend, too.”

“Got friends I don’t know about?” His voice is gravelly, calm. Reassuring in its predictability.

“You know, your friend I helped you track down. The small one.”

He chuckles. “Ain’t so small the way he tells it. How soon?”

“Soon as you can.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you at our spot. Two hours.”

Two hours is good. Longer than she hoped, sooner than she expected. Two hours gives her time to get her shit together, get her story straight. Then, she can call Madani and let her take care of it. Then, it will be like it never even happened. Like she hadn’t just killed her dad.

Matricide. Homicide. Patricide.

Karen’s roster of ghosts keeps growing longer.


	2. Karen falls apart

She showered as soon as she got home, but she can’t meet Frank and Micro – David Lieberman, which is a way less douchey CSI-chic name – in flannel pj’s. Her ribs and shoulder are killing her from her dad pushing her down the stairs – _This doesn’t concern you, baby_ – so she carefully pulls an oversized maxi dress up over her hips, wraps a heavy knit cardigan to hide her braless breasts. She can see the black bruise shadowing her clavicle above the layers and she still feels naked, so a scarf gets wrapped around her neck, too.

She gets there first, like last time. Frank gets there soon after, cradling two Anthora cups of coffee. One’s for her, apparently, because he passes one to her with a “Ma’am” and leans against the rail next to her, facing the street.

“Thanks,” she says, and takes a cautious sip. Black, sour with acid, watery. Not the best she’s ever had, but the cup warms up her hands and there’s something ritualistic and calming about sipping coffee. Even when Frank “one shot, one kill” Castle is standing next to you. Maybe especially when he’s standing next to you.

“You okay?” He’s grown out his hair again, and he’s sporting a beard. Frank in incognito mode looks pretty much like a poor hipster. Just needs to tidy the beard, get the hard part fade. He’s already rocking the boots and flannel.

“Sort of. I –“ She pauses, sucks in a breath, takes a sip of her coffee. “We’re not in any danger, but I only want to tell this story once. Let’s wait for your sidekick.”

Frank throws some side eye at her. “Not a sidekick, ma’am. But I can wait.”

“I appreciate that. You okay being out in public like this?”

“Sure am. Pete Castiglione is just a former Jarhead who likes working demo duty on high-rises.”

“Pete, huh?” She’s staring across the Hudson at the twirling lights on the West bank, not at “Pete,” but even still she can see that the new name rests easily on his body. There’s no bruises on his face, and his bare hands are clean and scab-free. He’s resting easily against the railing, weight on both feet. It might be the first time she’s seen him healed up. “I guess you could pass as a Pete.”

“Pass, my ass. Nobody looks twice at Pete Castiglione.” He says it with a thicker New York accent than he normally has, very New York City English.

She smiles into the coffee. She thinks it’s probably the first time she’s smiled since she found Matt’s apartment empty.

Lieberman shows up not ten minutes later, in ill-fitting chinos and a hoodie sporting an Old Navy logo. His hair is insane – way crazier than Frank’s – but he looks alert, rested. She’s glad Frank could help bring him back from the dead, reunite him with his family.

He shakes her hand, tells her he likes her work. “I liked the piece on exposing the abuses in sex work. Really good stuff about how insidious and pervasive it is.”

She thanks him, and then dives into why they’re here. “I need your help, Mr. Lieberman.”

“David, please. You need my, uh –“ He holds up his hands, wiggles his fingers like he’s typing. “Special skills?”

“Sure do.” Karen takes another sip of coffee, then a deep breath. She can’t fall apart. She can feel it lurking just below the surface of her face, is sure Frank is picking up some of it. But the crying and shivering and loss of control – and the anxiety that winds through it all like the worst kind of spider web – has to stay locked down until afterward.

“About 48 hours ago, I got a call from my dad up in Vermont. Paxton Page. I took a road trip, made it back here around noon. When the feds go looking, though, it needs to look like I never left Hell’s Kitchen.”

David’s eyebrows rise to hide behind the curly-cue fringe of hair. “Why don’t you start at the beginning, and walk me through step-by-step. That’s gonna be some pretty thorough work.”

She does. She starts by handing over the hand-written sheet of times and places she assembled this afternoon over leftover fried rice. She’s stapled the receipts from the gas station – paid in cash – she refueled at on the way back. Pulls out the worn AAA map she used to find the back highways and side streets, her route carefully highlighted in yellow marker.

David compliments her on her foresight. She left her phone at home, so there’s no cell activity to scramble. Stayed off the toll roads, which added miles and hours to the drive but eliminated the need to hack in and change their camera records. Her “new” car is a used white Camry, probably the most common car in America, which helps, too.

She skips over the time she actually spent at the farm, jumping seamlessly from arrival to departure. David asks a couple clarifying questions, like GPS usage and which town centers she drove through. It takes about 30 minutes to go through everything, but David seems upbeat while he drags a finger over her timeline.

“Okay, okay, okay. This is doable. You’re going to report this to the feds, you said. Any branch in particular?”

“Homeland Security,” she replies and for once saying the name doesn’t make her belly knot up.

“Good to know. I’ll, uh, get started on this tonight. Can you wait until tomorrow? I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”

“Yeah, can do. And thanks. I know that you’re not really doing this kind of thing anymore.”

David smiles a genuine smile, throws his arms wide in a “what can you do” gesture. He looks so normal, like a nerdy dad on a Disney Channel show. “You ratted me out to Frank, but it probably ended up being for the best anyhow. Plus, I kind of owe you for training a camera on your apartment window.”

Karen opens her mouth to get some more detail on that, but shuts it before anything escapes. Better to play nice with the hacker helping her disguise a murder. “Well, thanks anyhow,” she settles on, and David throws his right hand up in a lazy goodbye.

Frank and Karen watch together as he disappears around the corner. She lifts the coffee to her lips, but the cup’s empty. She passes it from one hand to another instead as her nerves flare up suddenly. She can see the fine tremors start up, and seeing that makes her struggle even harder to stay cool, pretend she’s not losing her mind.

“Hey,” Frank interjects into their little bubble of quiet. “You want to head back to your place, fill me in on the bits that you left out?”

“I do,” she replies and means it. It surprises her, how much she wants to tell Frank about what she’s done. She wants it so bad that she has to swallow back tears. “I really, really do. But I don’t know if my place is a safe place to talk about it. Not so much the feds as much as our mutual friend.” Talking about Matt/Daredevil like this is weird, because he doesn’t really feel like a friend right now and he was never Frank’s buddy.

“You talking about the man in tights?” Frank finishes his brew, pulls her empty cup out of nerveless fingers. “I got you. Let’s go for a ride, get out of his little hellhole for a bit.”

Frank leads her to another white sedan, this one an old Accord that was new back when she was in middle school. Holds the door open for her and everything like the polite boogeyman that he is. The car is as worn down inside as it is out, and smells faintly of cigarette smoke. But there’s no trash, no coins, nothing to show a real person drives it. It’s clearly a tool for Frank, not something he cares about.

They head out of Hell’s Kitchen, across the Lincoln Tunnel, way the hell out into the burbs of New Jersey. He pulls onto a couple side streets and then into the parking lot of a huge veterinarian’s office.

“You took me to a vet? What, do you think I’m rabid or something?”

“Suck it up, Page. You’ll like this.” He doesn’t get the door for her this time – she beats him to it – but he waits patiently at the trunk and then leads her around the back. There’s 24 hour flood light dimly illuminating hundreds of feet of chain link. Outdoor kennels, she realizes, and then watches in surprise as Frank flips through his keyring until he finds the one that opens the padlock.

It isn’t quiet. The dogs – and other animals, because hell if that isn’t a goat – hear them coming and they bark a bit and whine as she and Frank pass through into a wide corridor flanked on either side with at least sixteen kennels. He makes her stop, dip her shoes in a tray, wash her hands at the utility sink cum grooming basin. They’ve stopped trembling, are calm and steady under the rush of hot water.

“You like dogs?” Frank asks, and she can’t manage a verbal reply but her nod works well enough.

It’s the happiest that she’s been in, what, weeks? Since Matt came back from the not-dead, what the fuck, and Foggy lost his goddamn mind at him. There was a brief moment, between when she forgave Matt – because what else can she do? – and when his inability to let things go ruined everything. She was hopeful, thinking they could try again now that everything was on the table. Now that the ninjas had disappeared, and his ex was dead for real, and the weird celibate order that had raised him was leaving him alone. She’s pretty sure that Foggy can forgive Matt one day, too. But any hope she once held that she could trust Matt is gone, destroyed the moment _Hi, Dad_ was answered with _Your blind friend is here_.

Frank leads her to one kennel in particular, lifts the latch, as starts speaking to the dog inside in the lowest, calmest voice she’s ever heard from him. It’s like smoke, like the wind through bare winter branches. The dog inside is eating it up if the _thump thump thump_ of his tail on the dog bed means anything.

Except it’s not a he, it’s a she. And she had what looks like a dozen nursing puppies.

Just like that, she’s wrecked.

Karen’s sobbing, shaking hands held up over her mouth in a vain effort to keep it all in. Big, fat, sloppy tears run down her face, fill her nose with snot, make her throat clamp up like a fist. The anxiety and pain and anger – so much anger at Matt and her dad and herself, most of all – it comes out in the form of tears. Like she’s throwing a tantrum, like she’s a toddler. And that makes her angrier and so frustrated, that she can’t keep it together even a little bit and instead is just this big mess sitting next to Frank motherfucking Castle.

The momma dog is some sort of big pitty mutt, and Frank’s just sitting there, stoking her head gently and pretending like Karen isn’t embarrassing herself at the gate.

“Can I –“ she gets out before having to suck in a breath to hold back an ugly sob. “Do you think –?” 

Frank answers the unspoken question, picking up one of the soft little sausages of puppy and placing it gently in her outstretched hands. Her shoulder protests, but she doesn’t care. Karen pulls the puppy close to her chest, breathes in the milky sweet puppy smell, and huddles over the little body. She isn’t sure if it’s a boy or girl – she’s not even sure of the color, the light’s so bad – but it doesn’t matter as she holds it in her arms and pets it and cries.

The puppy wakes up at one point and starts wiggling, so she gingerly lowers herself to the cold cement and puts it down. She watches as it waddles over and starts sucking on swollen teats, happy as can be. Karen has pretty much cried herself out at this point, but she doesn’t feel like talking yet. Frank’s quiet, too, leaning up against the chain link with his legs stretched out straight in front of him. He’s watching the puppies sleep and nurse, not staring at Karen like he’s waiting for her to start talking. Just calm and patient. That patience is enough to get her started.

“I, uh, I killed a man Christmas before last.” It’s not what she wanted to say, has nothing to do with Vermont, but it comes out anyway. But maybe she can’t talk about Vermont right now. She can talk about Wesley, though, like Frank’s her priest and she’s at confession. _Matt would have a cow if he heard that comparison_ , she thinks uncharitably.

“You get away clean? Got someone after you?” Frank’s reply startles her, makes her stare at him for long moments while she processes. 

She’s thought a lot about Wesley over the past eighteen months, about him dismissing her as a threat. Thought about what Matt would say, what Foggy would think, whether she’s a good person or an evil one. Thought about Kevin and her mom, too. Whether she’s a victim or a perpetrator.

These are the kinds of thoughts that pushed her to fight so hard for Frank, back when he first waged war against his family’s killers. When Steve Grotte picked Nelson and Murdock to save him.

She’s thought about what Frank would say, if he knew that she’s a killer. Would he “punish” her like the hysterical media implied? Would he dismiss it as trivial, inconsequential next to his own tally of the dead, which has to run into the hundreds? Would he lecture her on safety, being smarter?

Hearing him now, asking if she’s safe, it seems so natural she doesn’t know why she didn’t expect it.

“No. I mean, at this point, I’m pretty sure no one knows. Just you.” Karen drags her gaze away from Frank’s implacable stare, looks at the dogs instead. Counts their wiggling bodies twice, arrives at nine and one.

“You want to share?” Frank shifts, picks up another slumbering puppy but brings it to his chest this time. The little body basically disappears between the bulk of his arm and chest, and she watches him run gentle fingers down the pup’s belly.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sure. Okay.”

She starts with a little backstory about Fisk and Nelson & Murdock, and why James Wesley abducted her off her front stoop. Talks a little about Ben, but stops. Starts again, and gives him the full story. Frank has exposed every raw nerve he has, the open wounds from his family and more. He deserves her honesty, her pain.

When she gets to the part where she killed Wesley, he stops petting the dog for a bit and she can feel his attention focused on her. She finds herself bitching a bit about how Wesley pontificated for long minutes while he slowly got around to threatening her. Frank snorts a little bit, then spins his wrist around in a “move along” gesture as she trails off.

“And then he got a call. Stupid, right? He took his eyes off the gun for a second, like I wasn’t even there. I mean, he didn’t even tie me to the chair. The gun was barely out of my reach, just on the other half of a four – five? – foot table. I got it. I got it and he tried to bluff. Tried to tell me he wasn’t foolish enough to leave a loaded gun on the table. He was trying to scare me, make me doubt myself, make me afraid to try. And then he tried to stand up. So I shot him. Seven times.”

“Karen,” he says after she’s been quite for a bit. She’s crying again, with her hand up across her mouth _again_ like a damsel in distress. Like a silver screen actress on a Turner Classic Movie. “What happened after you took care of him?”

“I, uh.” She stops, wipes her face with the sleeve of the cardigan. “I wiped the table down, tossed the gun in the river. Fisk didn’t know that Wesley had taken me. Then we put him behind bars. Nothing’s come from it. I don’t think Fisk knows I was ever there, that there was ever any reason to bother with little old me. Which is probably the only reason I’m still breathing.”

“Don’t need to worry about Fisk. He and I, we have some history behind us. He won’t be a problem. Soon as he gets out of the clink, I’ll take care of him.” Frank clicks his tongue, and she knows he has a bullet and a gun just waiting for Wilson Fisk in some bolt hole on Manhattan.

“Sounds like you did a good thing, Karen. You protected number one – got yourself out of there, clean and tidy. Protected your friends, protected your family. Got rid of a very bad guy, guy who hurt lots of people and organized some very bad shit. Hurt another bad guy, hurt his organization, made it harder for him to made the world worse.”

“But I killed him.” She hates how small her voice is.

“Yeah. Sure did. You think the guys who took out Osama bin Laden feel bad about it?”

Karen can’t help but laugh. It starts out like it’s half a gasp, but evolves until she’s giggling. “Bullshit, Frank. That’s just pure, unadulterated bullshit. They don’t even compare.”

Frank looks up, smirks at her and she can tell he was trying to bring her out of it. “Caught me. But, Karen. You took out one bad guy. Just one. No innocents got hurt, and you left no evidence. You saved at least what – six, seven lives? That’s just the people you know. That doesn’t count the people this shithead would ordered dead, or the collateral dead. You think this Wesley character wasn’t a bad guy? That he hadn’t killed someone before?

“Do you believe he deserved to go to jail – that his time spent at club fed would have changed him so he came out a good man?” Frank sneers the last words, voice dark and mean in a way she hasn’t heard from him since he was trying to take out the Blacksmith. “Say you managed to dig up enough hard evidence to get him put away. You really think this guy wouldn’t have been running his boss’ business from a ten by ten cell for three years before getting out on parole? That he wouldn’t have spent his time recruiting new guys, bag boys and meaner shitstains, who would jump at the chance to have a steady gig right out of prison? Nah. Karen, look at me.”

She looks up, meets his gaze. Frank’s not pretending to give her privacy anymore. His dark eyes are nothing but socket-shaped shadows in the poor light, but she can feel them pinning her in place anyway.

”You killed a man, and it was a _just kill_. Ignore whatever you think your so-called Devil has got to say about it, about redemption and bullshit like that. Guys like this one, guys who taste power? They get addicted to it real quick, and ain’t nothin’ but death gonna cure that illness.”

The puppy in his arms lets out a big yawn, and his head tilts down and she can breathe again. Frank lets her process that in peace, lets her mull it over. She shifts her weight, moves next to him until they’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder against the kennel fence. The raised wire of the interlocking links don’t feel great on her shoulder or ribs, but she likes the barely-there contact of Frank’s deltoid against hers. He stokes the back of his knuckle along the puppy’s soft underside and she watches the little brown belly _puff puff puff_ with swift little baby breaths.

“Want another?” he asks, eventually. Like they’re at a bar and he wants to know if she wants a refill.

“Hell, yes,” she replies with a laugh that sounds only a little broken. He scoops another pup, and it fits neatly into just one of his hands. He’s killed – brutally – with those hands, but they’re holding this baby just as gently as he once held his own.

This one’s definitely a little girl, she sees, tan with faint shadows on her paws that might turn into socks. Karen cradles her in the valley between her thighs, and draws soft fingers over the downy fur. “What’s gonna happen to them?”

“This vet, I’ve been coming here for a couple months now.” It shouldn’t surprise her – he has a key after all – but she never imagined Frank volunteering to walk dogs and clean up shit. “I come in on the week nights, make sure everyone’s okay. Give ‘em some rubs, take some of the rowdy ones out to walk it off.

“Anyway, the veterinarian here. His wife is a vet, an Army National Guard lady who got called up and thrown into some pretty bad shit the Guard wasn’t prepared for. She got home a little banged up, and now she and her old man run a rescue. ‘Sposed to be for German Shepherds, but really it’s for veterans. They rescue the dogs, get them cleaned up, neutered. Train them up. When the dog’s ready, they pair ‘em up with a veteran. Lots of guys with TBI, PTSD, depression. You know. The dogs help.”

“Yeah,” she said. The dogs did help.

“Carla, she’s already spoken for. Just got to finish weaning, see her babies off, get a little nip-tuck. Her pups? They’ll probably get fostered for a bit, get adopted out to families. People who want a puppy, but want to rescue, too. They try to pair fully-grown dogs with the veterans, not puppies. Puppies are too hard for a lot of these guys fresh off base. Too much work, too much patience.”

He goes quiet for a bit, and then starts talking again. “When you come home, when you get back from deployment, they try to do right by you. Lots of exit counseling – financial, mental health, don’t-off-yourself-101, the works. It’s not like they kick you off the carrier and you’re off playing at civvie the next day. But a lot of us – most of us – it takes longer than that. Takes a while to wind down, to get out of the mindset, slip back into the old life. Sometimes, that old life? It doesn’t fit so well anymore.

“It’s why I loved being a Marine, partly. I’d come home and, Jesus Christ. Maria would be there with Lisa, like something out of a World War II poster. Just so beautiful, the both of them. But you don’t just go from jumping out of planes, camping in caves, living on a FOB that’s half plywood and half prayers and then the next day be a-okay living in a two bedroom apartment in the middle of Manhattan. It just doesn’t happen. It didn’t happen for me. Sometimes, I’d be there, with them and – ah, I want to just beat myself bloody for it – but I’d daydream about being back over there. It’s fucked up, but it’s God’s honest truth.

“You have to recalibrate. Realize that getting in someone’s face isn’t the way to motivate them. You know? Like, you can’t yell at your neighbor for waking up the baby like he’s a national walking up to a checkpoint. It doesn’t fucking work.

“Guys – and ladies – anyway, the vets that get these dogs, they don’t need one more thing to feel guilty about. Don’t need to feel two inches tall for yelling at a puppy for pissing on the rug, don’t need the frustration of chewed up furniture. Better for them, better for the dogs, they get an adult. A buddy who can be there when they wake up, get ‘em out of the house when it’s too hard. You know?”

“Yeah,” she replied and rested her hand on the warm belly of her puppy. “Yeah, I know.”

They sit in silence for a while longer, until Carla the momma dog picks her head up and checks in on Karen’s puppy. Karen gives her the baby, tucking the little pound of pup in alongside her siblings. She has to lean over Frank’s legs as she does it and it’s crazy how much bigger they are than hers. They’re the same height, but he has to have quads twice the size of hers. Evidence of his history right there in the shape of his body, in his muscles and scars and swollen joints.

“I think maybe,” Frank says, watching as she gingerly returns to sitting. Her ribs are mad – she’s gone too long without an analgesic and she can feel the sharp bite of the fence making things even worse. “Maybe I take you home. Give you the number of my buddy. Let you talk to him about some of this stuff.”

“Your buddy, huh?” She hears her tone, realizes she’s teasing Frank Castle. Remembers telling him about the gingersnaps. It’s crazy that she has a healthier relationship with a guy with a literal hole in his head that she ever did with her not-quite-boyfriend. “I thought you didn’t have friends.”

“Hey,” he growls out in mock-offense, and nudges her good shoulder with his. “I got one, maybe two.

“But, this guy. This guy. Curtis Hoyle. He’s saved my life. He’s a solid guy. You can talk to him about shit like this, you know? Stuff like this Wesley character, like your Daredevil. Like getting blown up in a hotel kitchen, or whatever happened in Vermont. He’s like a vault. I trust him 100%. You tell him where the bodies are buried, they’re gonna stay right where they are. He came home, had a hard time for a while. I’ll let him tell you about it. But he came out of it and now he runs a group for vets, is licensed and everything. You tell him whatever feels good to get out. Drain the wounds, you know? He can take it. Sound good?”

“Maybe,” she says, because Frank doesn’t lie to her and she doesn’t lie to him. “Maybe…yeah. Maybe I’ll tell him about the bodies.”

“Okay,” he replies. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm playing fast and loose with the comic source material. One, because it's fun. Two, because the wikipedia summary didn't really draw me in or make me invested in the Death's Head storyline. But I think (hope) that we'll see some light shed on Karen's backstory in season 3 of DD (maybe even The Punisher, who knows).
> 
> So this story picks up at where I'd speculate DD season 3 to end, although I skipped over the parts dealing with DD and picked up where it gets interesting – with Karen.


End file.
